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Breakfast of Champions (film)
| runtime = 110 minutes | country = United States | language = English | budget = $12 million | gross = $178,278 }}Breakfast of Champions is a 1999 American black comedy film adapted and directed by Alan Rudolph, from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s 1973 novel of the same name. Though the producers entered it into the 49th Berlin International Film Festival, the film was panned by critics and was a box office bomb that was withdrawn from theatres before going into wide release. Plot Dwayne Hoover, a car salesman who is the most respected businessman in Midland City, Indiana, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, even attempting suicide daily. His wife, Celia, is addicted to pills, and his sales manager and best friend, Harry Le Sabre, is preoccupied with his own secret fondness for wearing lingerie, worried he will be discovered. Meanwhile, a little-known science fiction author, Kilgore Trout, is hitchhiking across the United States to speak at Midland City's arts festival. In search of answers for his identity quest, Hoover decides to attend the festival. Cast * Bruce Willis as Dwayne Hoover * Albert Finney as Kilgore Trout * Nick Nolte as Harry LeSabre * Barbara Hershey as Celia Hoover * Glenne Headly as Francine Pefko * Lukas Haas as George "Bunny" Hoover * Omar Epps as Wayne Hoobler * Vicki Lewis as Grace LeSabre * Buck Henry as Fred T. Barry * Ken Campbell as Eliot Rosewater / Gilbert * Jake Johanssen as Bill Bailey * Will Patton as Moe the truck driver * Chip Zien as Andy Wojeckowzski * Owen Wilson as Monte Rapid * Alison Eastwood as Maria Maritimo * Shawnee Smith as Bonnie McMahon * Michael Jai White as Howell * Michael Duncan as Eli * Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. as Commercial director * Doug Maughan (voice) as TV/radio announcer (uncredited) Production Lukas Haas makes a cameo as Bunny, Dwayne's son, who, in the novel, plays piano in the lounge at the Holiday Inn. For legal reasons, in the film Bunny instead plays at the AmeriTel Inn. Much of the film was shot in and around Twin Falls, Idaho. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. makes a one-line cameo as a TV commercial director. Vonnegut's reaction At the close of the Harper Audiobook edition of Breakfast of Champions, there is brief conversation between Vonnegut and his long-time friend and attorney, Donald C. Farber, in which the two, among making jokes, disparage this loose film adaptation of the book as "painful to watch." Reception Critical response Breakfast of Champions received negative reviews, scoring a rating of 26% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 47 reviews. The consensus says: "The movie is overwhelmed by its chaotic visual effects and disjointed storyline." In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, "In many ways, Breakfast of Champions is an incoherent mess. But it never compromises its zany vision of the country as a demented junkyard wonderland in which we are all strangers groping for a hand to guide us through the looking glass into an unsullied tropical paradise of eternal bliss." Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "F" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Rudolph, in an act of insane folly, seems to think that what matters is the story. The result could almost be his version of a Robert Altman disaster — a movie so unhinged it practically dares you not to hate it." In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Stack wrote, "Rudolph botches the material big time. Relying on lame visual gimmicks that fall flat, and insisting on pushing almost every scene as frantic comedy weighted by social commentary, he forces his actors to become hams rather than believable characters." Sight and Sound magazine's Edward Lawrenson wrote, "Willis' performance, all madness, no method, soon feels embarrassingly indulgent." In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, "As it is, Breakfast of Champions is too in-your-face, too heavily satirical in its look, and its ideas not as fresh as they should be. For the film to have grabbed us from the start, Rudolph needed to make a sharper differentiation between the everyday world his people live in and the vivid world of their tormented imaginations." In her review for the Village Voice, Amy Taubin wrote, "Another middle-aged male-crisis opus, it begins on a note of total migraine-inducing hysteria, which continues unabated throughout." The French filmmaker and critic Luc Moullet, on the other hand, regarded it as one of the greatest films of the 1990s. See also * Cross-dressing in film and television * Kilgore Trout References External links * * * * Category:1999 films Category:1990s black comedy films Category:American black comedy films Category:American films Category:American satirical films Category:Cross-dressing in American films Category:English-language films Category:Films about writers Category:Films based on works by Kurt Vonnegut Category:Films directed by Alan Rudolph Category:Films set in Idaho Category:Films shot in Idaho Category:Hollywood Pictures films Category:Summit Entertainment films Category:American independent films Category:Twin Falls, Idaho Category:Film scores by Mark Isham Category:Films about car dealerships Category:Films based on American novels